Emma the Imaginist

Deborah Yaffe is the author of Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen Fandom (2013). She’s an award-winning newspaper journalist and author and she’s been a passionate Jane Austen fan since first reading Pride and Prejudice at age ten. She has a bachelor’s degree in humanities from Yale University and a master’s degree in politics, philosophy, and economics from Oxford University, which she attended on a Marshall Scholarship. She works as a freelance writer and lives in central New Jersey with her husband, her two children, and her Jane Austen action figure.

For Emma in the Snow, she asked her daughter, Rachel Yaffe-Bellany, to take this photo of snow in New Jersey after last week’s snowfall. I’m delighted to introduce Deborah’s guest post on “Emma the Imaginist.”

Deborah says this is “The Last Gasp of Winter (or so we hope, at least).” (I’m hoping the snow that’s falling this morning is the last gasp of winter in Nova Scotia as well.)

Such an adventure as this,—a fine young man and a lovely young woman thrown together in such a way, could hardly fail of suggesting certain ideas to the coldest heart and the steadiest brain. So Emma thought, at least. Could a linguist, could a grammarian, could even a mathematician have seen what she did, have witnessed their appearance together, and heard their history of it, without feeling that circumstances had been at work to make them peculiarly interesting to each other?—How much more must an imaginist, like herself, be on fire with speculation and foresight!—especially with such a ground-work of anticipation as her mind had already made.

(Volume 3, Chapter 3, from the Norton Critical Edition of Emma, edited by George Justice [2012])

From David Copperfield and Jo March to T.S. Garp and Harriet the Spy, fiction is filled with writer-characters, semi-autobiographical outgrowths of their creators’ self-perceptions. At first blush, however, Jane Austen doesn’t seem to fit this pattern: Patricia Rozema’s 1999 film of Mansfield Park may transform Fanny Price into a stand-in for the scribbling young Austen, exhorting her younger sister, “Run mad as often as you chuse, but do not faint!” but Austen herself created no writer-characters.

Except, perhaps, for Emma Woodhouse.

Emma is in love with narrative. In the novel’s very first scene, we find her telling her anxious father a comforting bedtime story about their future visits to Randalls—down to the stabling for the horses and the reactions of coachman James. Most of the stories Emma tells, however, are of a different, very specific kind: they are courtship stories, whether about the Westons’ marriage and her own (possibly exaggerated) role in furthering it, or about Jane Fairfax’s illicit Dixon romance, or, as in the passage above, about Frank and Harriet’s future together. Inside her own head, Emma is a would-be Jane Austen, obsessed with the marriage plot. So strong is her narrative impulse that she experiences people she doesn’t yet know as mental creations of her own—“according to my idea of Mrs. Churchill … ” (Volume 1, Chapter 14); “My idea of [Frank] is … ” (Volume 1, Chapter 18)—and flattens those she does know into recognizable dramatic types (“a fine young man and a lovely young woman”).

More dangerously, of course, Emma moves from narration to creation—from telling stories about others’ lives to attempting to mold reality into the narrative shape she has chosen. And the deeper she gets into this effort—re-forming the malleable Harriet into a more polished version of ladyhood, scotching Robert Martin’s proposal, promoting the match with Mr. Elton—the harder it becomes for her to experience these people as separate beings with their own inner lives, rather than as the characters she has created. “Mr. Elton was proving himself, in many respects, the very reverse of what she had meant and believed him,” Emma thinks in mortified vexation, as if her own beliefs and intentions about his personality should somehow have compelled his conformity. She reassures herself with the “great consolation … that Harriet’s nature should not be of that superior sort in which the feelings are most acute and retentive”—and then is startled to find that, in fact, it takes months for Harriet to recover from her heartbreak (Volume 1, Chapter 16). She is even surprised to discover that Harriet’s rejection has wounded the Martins—so surprised that she must quickly tell herself a new, self-exculpatory story about their motivations (“Ambition, as well as love, had probably been mortified” [Volume 2, Chapter 3]).

In fact, although Emma thinks of herself as “an imaginist,” her imaginative repertoire is fatally impoverished, for she is unable to imagine the feelings of other people. Like her father, who assumes that everyone must feel as he does, and therefore prefer gruel and quiet to cake and company, Emma makes herself the measure of all things. The humbling journey on which Jane Austen takes her is an education not only in her own feelings for Mr. Knightley but also in the irreducibly separate reality of other people’s experience, and the respect that this irreducible separateness demands. Essentially, this is what Mr. Knightley calls to her attention in the scolding he administers after the Box Hill picnic: Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, must think herself into the life of a woman who is none of those things, and behave accordingly. Only in the final chapters of the novel, when Emma schools herself to endure suffering out of “a strong sense of justice by Harriet” (Volume 3, Chapter 11) and an unselfish desire to help Mr. Knightley (“Emma could not bear to give him pain” [Volume 3, Chapter 13]) does she fully imagine the feelings of others and resolve to put them ahead of her own.

Along the way, Emma—and by extension, we, the readers—also get a quiet education in storytelling. For Emma, the drama of courtship grows, ideally, out of melodrama: she is captivated by Jane Fairfax’s rescue from near-drowning and Harriet’s disturbing encounter with the gypsies. Even for the Westons’ uneventful middle-aged romance, Emma proposes a semi-dramatic starting-point: the protagonists’ chance encounter during a convenient rainstorm. No wonder she assumes Harriet must have fallen for the man who rescued her from the gypsies. Such an adventure! So peculiarly interesting! It turns out, however, that for Harriet, the adventure lies somewhere else entirely—in the “much more precious circumstance” (Volume 3, Chapter 11) of dancing with Mr. Knightley after the Eltons’ snub. True drama, Emma learns from Harriet, lies not in the extraordinary but in the everyday. And, of course, this is the great truth that all Austen’s work teaches us, and that is lost on critics who berate her for leaving out the Corn Laws and the Napoleonic Wars: the small tragedies and accomplishments of private life matter as much as the great dramas of war and politics. Emma, the would-be courtship novelist, must learn to appreciate the dramatic substance of her own unremarkable life.

But if Emma is Austen’s only writer-character, she is a strange version of the type, for she never writes a line. Her stories remain locked inside her imaginist’s mind, or, at most, imperfectly realized in the world around her. She is less a writer than a writer manqué, her creative impulses left unexpressed, thwarted by her own limitations and by the messiness of real life. Will the adventure of marriage and child-rearing provide the creative outlet she needs—an outlet that, we Austen readers cannot help noticing, Emma’s creator found wholly inadequate for her own creative impulses? In the final line of the novel, Austen assures us of Emma’s future “perfect happiness” (Volume 3, Chapter 19), but it’s hard not to imagine a very different outcome.

Twenty-fourth in a series of blog posts celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen’s Emma. To read more about all the posts in the series, visit Emma in the Snow. Coming soon: guest posts by Kim Wilson and Paul Savidge.

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24 thoughts on “Emma the Imaginist”

A very perceptive blog! Made me think of L M Montgomery and the later Anne novels. I never felt, even as a child, that the whole domestic bliss thing really would have been enough for Anne, who should have been off in New York at the heart of the writing and publishing world. I liked very much your perceptive observations along the same lines about Emma! And, I think you are quite right.

Since Emma ends just as the marriage is getting started, I think the jury is out on how it’s going to go. It’s certainly possible to imagine Emma being happy running the lives of her children and servants, hopefully with a somewhat lighter hand than she’s employed so far. But I think JA does give us enough material to make the happy ending potentially ambiguous — this is one of the reasons she’s such a fascinating writer.

Sharon, what did you think of the third Anne movie, which departs from the novels and does send Anne to New York to work in publishing? (This topic also makes me think of Nick Mount’s research into what happened when Canadian Literature moved to New York….)

“And, of course, this is the great truth that all Austen’s work teaches us, and that is lost on critics who berate her for leaving out the Corn Laws and the Napoleonic Wars: the small tragedies and accomplishments of private life matter as much as the great dramas of war and politics.”

Yes, I think JA is very clever at letting us see these familial resemblances among even apparently dissimilar characters. It would be interesting to look for these in some of the other novels, I think. . .

As I would have expected, Deborah, an excellent analysis of one half of the “ledger” left to us by Jane Austen in Emma.

However your post also has an inadvertent shadow story – it can also be read as an inadvertent but devastating analysis of the Reader Manqué — I.e., the reader who, like Emma in the fictional world, cannot see the alternative reality right in front of his/her nose, but keeps insisting to the bitter end that only their own reality is the one that is “there”. What if Emma never does stop being clueless, but only believes she does?

Only a post as insightful as yours on one level, could be so readily inverted to undermine itself.

I’ve always loved writer-characters, starting with Jo March :), and there’s no telling how disappointed I was in Fanny Price after watching the Rozema adaptation – talk of an imaginist! :(. But I know some dislike what they see as an exercise in navel-gazing on the author’s part. In this respect I think JA’s ability to transcend her immediate experience would highlight her inventive powers.

Emma’s been endowed with an impressive imagination, but, unlike her creator, lacks the necessary discipline: “She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding.” Our heroine is certainly no reader: she can’t go beyond “a few first chapters, and the intention of going on to-morrow. It was much easier to chat than to study; much pleasanter to let her imagination range and work at Harriet’s fortune.” And the passage you’ve quoted would suggest she ranks grammar amongst the most boring things in life.

I’ve always thought that JA would gladly have given up her “darling children” for any of her heroes. Emma will tell her own wonderful bedtime stories, and perhaps inspire one of them to put pen to paper – Mr Knightley will hopefully take care of the rest. 🙂

Interesting. Am I understanding you correctly that you believe Austen would have gladly given up novel writing if only Knightley, Wentworth, Darcy, Tilney or Edward had shown up on her doorstep? Maybe even Edmund? No, Edmund is a bridge too far! 🙂

It’s provocative and I’m not sure what I think. On the one hand, everyone wants personal happiness and most of us will plunk for it over uncertain fame after death. But, I think she knew the value of what she was doing. I wonder if she wouldn’t have worked in some novel-writing anyway. I mean, with everyone except Edward she would have had child care help. Edward and she might not have been able to afford it. Maybe Marianne would lend a hand or share her nanny. 🙂

She may have been a convinced imaginist herself, but known herself better than Emma. Maybe she knew that she could derive her greatest earthly satisfaction from works of the imagination where she could make sure deserving heroines get suitable mates.

Just speculating – not attached to these thoughts. I just shudder to think of living in a world without the works of Jane Austen.

I agree with monicadescalzi that Emma doesn’t have the discipline to write — her own personal limitations, as much as any circumstantial roadblocks, prevent her from being more than a writer manque. But plenty of people who lack the talent, drive and discipline to create still long to do so, and feel frustration and emptiness at their failure. This is the fate that I think we might imagine for Emma, if we took a dark view of JA’s ending — though it’s also perfectly possible to imagine that she finds an adequate creative outlet in marriage and motherhood. (An alternative interpretation of her narrative drive is that she wants a parent-like power over others; under that interpretation, her relationship with Harriet is practice at mothering, as she recapitulates her now-lost relationship with Miss Taylor, this time casting herself in the role of the older-and-wiser parent-figure.)

Like maidrya, I find it hard to believe, though, that this would ever have been enough for Jane Austen, who, unlike Emma, did have the drive and discipline to write, not to mention talent of a kind that comes along very rarely indeed. We certainly know that mere financial security wasn’t enough to tempt her — she turned down Harris Bigg-Withers’ proposal at a time when she had published nothing and was old enough to suspect that she might never get another offer. But perhaps a deeper love might have been harder to walk away from. Still, she must have noticed that the married women of her class, even those, like her sister-in-law Elizabeth, with plenty of money and servants, seldom had the uninterrupted physical and psychic space for creation. There’s a reason that so few women writers before the mid-20th century were mothers. . .

Maidrya and Deborah: thank you both for your interesting replies – so much food for thought!

By the time JA met Tom Lefroy and wrote so enthusiastically to Cassandra about him she had already written Lady Susan and the first, epistolary version of Elinor and Marianne – not to mention her earlier stories. Reading those letters, I do get the impression that she would have said “yes” had he dared to propose. She was 20 in January 1796 and sounded quite in love to me – I may be wrong, it might have been just a crush, but what with hormones raging and all it would have been hard to tell … As Lizzy Bennet puts it: “since we see every day that where there is affection, young people are seldom withheld by immediate want of fortune from entering into engagements with each other, how can I promise to be wiser than so many of my fellow creatures if I am tempted, or how am I even to know that it would be wisdom to resist?” And none of JA’s heroes is as impecunious as Tom was then. 🙂 Anyway, I suppose the perceived prospect of a happy life trumps that of literary fame – whether either will actually be fulfilled is quite another matter …

She might have been afraid of death in childbirth or of being turned into a “poor animal” by frequent pregnancies, but I don’t believe she would have rejected Mr Darcy, Mr Knightley, Capt. Wentworth, or Col. Brandon. BTW, come to think of it, Maidrya, I doubt whether Edmund or Edward would have had the guts to pop the question 🙂 I imagine that Mr Darcy’s “sort [of] feeling – that mixture of love, pride, and delicacy” towards his wife would make him attentive to her physical and emotional well-being, and his creator would have expected no less of the others. This doesn’t mean JA might not have later wished to resume her writing career or regret that she couldn’t – or that she would have been happier as a married woman.

As to Emma, I don’t really think she’ll ever feel the urge to become an author: she’s rather a doer, and she’s no reader. She’ll still enjoy “the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess,” and maybe her tendency to scheme and sort out other people’s lives won’t be so easily conquered. The older and frailer Mr Woodhouse grows, the busier she’ll be, and what with the children, and her duties as Mistress of Donwell Abbey there won’t be much time for regrets. “It suited Emma best to lead,” and that, IMHO, is how she expresses her personality.

Well, thanks for the info on Austen’s accomplishments before Tom Lefroy came on the scene. I have read her novels over and over but have not been quite so attentive to her bio (sketchy as it is) as other Austen fans, not to mention the scholars.

I think it entirely possible she was in love with Lefroy & would have said yes. (I didn’t realize Lefroy was without fortune – I thought his family didn’t consider JA well-bred enough – but, as I say, my info on these things is sketchy).

I guess I was thinking more in terms of what her views would have been in the twilight of her life. I guess we’ll never know. Well, we know this much: she refused at least one marriage proposal. In my mind, she would have been very pleased with her literary accomplishments and wouldn’t have traded them for much – maybe one of her heroes, but no one else. I think of her as well-content and able to see the advantages of her circumscribed personal life. Maybe I would put it this way: she doesn’t *wish* to be a spinster in her younger life, but as she goes on she knows there are some gains she’s had that likely could not have come any other way and she’s reconciled to this.

There seems to be a certain poignancy in writing about love and courtship and forever plotting happy endings that elude the author in real life. It wasn’t just spinsterhood: there was also the “dreadful propensity for being poor.” Having to depend financially on her brothers after her father’s death can’t have been easy. At some point the “dear trio” were even at risk of losing their Chawton home as a consequence of a lawsuit against Edward.

However, I’d like to believe that, as you say, JA became reconciled to her lot, being undoubtedly wise enough to realise that a happy ending is just a beginning, and that even well-matched couples “have their share of vexation.” She certainly knew her books were good and were read and enjoyed by many, and was glad of the money they brought in. And she obviously experienced the joys of artistic creation.

Welcome!

I write about Jane Austen, Jane Austen for kids, and Edith Wharton. Sometimes I post about other writers I admire, such as L.M. Montgomery, and about places I love (especially Nova Scotia and Alberta). I taught writing at Harvard University before I decided to come home to Nova Scotia to write full time.

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"I must keep to my own style & go on in my own Way; And though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other." Jane Austen to James Stanier Clarke, 1 April 1816

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